POETS SQUARE de Courtney Gustafson

Beautifully written literary nonfiction about animals with a profound core like H Is for Hawk and Fox and I. Structured in smart, snappy personal essays that probe at the problems of personhood in the internet age, it will appeal to fans of Melissa Broder or Jia Tolentino, and its introspective, generous thinking on self and society evokes Wintering.

POETS SQUARE:
Essays on Cats & Community
by Courtney Gustafson
Crown, 2024
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

When Courtney Gustafson moved into a new rental in the Poets Square neighborhood in Tuscon, Arizona, she would never have guessed that a colony of feral cats living in her driveway would change her life forever. Settling into a secure romantic relationship while it felt like the world around her was burning down, she couldn’t know how reluctantly, then profoundly, she would come to care about the health and safety of those thirty-some-odd neglected cats: Beebs, Lola, Sadboy, Goldie, Dr. Big Butt, Reverse Monkey, Rihanna, and so many more.
She had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem. And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle—towards an ethics of care, of individuals trying their best amidst spectacularly failing systems—would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled with much of her life. She also didn’t expect that the TikTok and Instagram accounts she created about the cats would end up with a just shy of a combined million followers.
POETS SQUARE is a memoir-in-essays about becoming an accidental cat rescuer, going viral, creating community, and surviving capitalism. These essays tell the brutal and tender stories of cats Courtney has saved (or failed to save) as a lens to explore everything from poverty and mental health to morality and misogyny. We see how cat rescue—despite its often-enormous sadness—paradoxically helped in a struggle with depression, showing the way towards an interrelated community of cats and care. The book explores caretaking and kindness in the face of a broken system: what it means for an individual to refuse to throw their hands up, to insist on showing up regardless of insurmountable problems, to search for ways to be a good person in the face of crushing overwhelm.

Courtney Gustafson is the creator of @PoetsSquareCats on TikTok (918k) and Instagram (61k). Her cats and rescue work have been featured on The Dodo, Newsweek, Best Friends Animal Society Magazine, and elsewhere. Before she had thirty cats, she completed a masters degree and PhD coursework in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where her interests included community literacies and literacy within incarcerated populations. She taught first-year writing at UMass before leaving academia to work in nonprofit communications. Most recently she’s worked for a large regional food bank, managing social media strategy, storytelling, fundraising, and crisis communications. She has continued to teach creative writing and adult basic literacy as a volunteer in prisons and in refugee communities in Tucson, Arizona, and volunteers as a mentor to incarcerated writers with PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Lady Science, Word Riot, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere.

BLOOD OF THE FORSAKEN de Maxym M. Martineau

An epic romantic fantasy for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Scarlett St. Clair.

BLOOD OF THE FORSAKEN
by Maxym M. Martineau
Sourcebooks Casablanca, August 2024

When Charmers begin falling beneath the thrall of a powerful spell, the Council devises a plan to find the two people in all the realm who might be able to save them: Kaori’s parents, long thought lost…but not, it seems, dead. As fate would have it, they’ve spent years trapped inside Galvanhold, a magical prison designed to incapacitate the worst of the worst—and once you enter Galvanhold, there’s no escape.

Time is running out; they need the knowledge Kaori’s parents hold, or all is lost. Willing to risk everything for the woman who showed him so much kindness, the assassin Calem volunteers to be sent away as a prisoner so he can get the information they need and break out again with the help of his unpredictable powers.

But once inside, Calem is unexpectedly faced with a familiar and terrifying figure: his mother, the prison’s cruel Warden. As Calem’s past threatens to consume him, Kaori and her friends must find a way to rescue him and complete their mission. But when their plan goes awry, the group unwittingly unleashes the Lost, a powerful magician who has been biding his time waiting for revenge. With chaos descending upon the realm, Kaori and her friends must confront their deepest fears and fight for their very survival. But even as Kaori and Calem find solace in each other’s arms, can their love survive the trials ahead?

Maxym M. Martineau is an article and social media writer by day and a fantasy romance author by night. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Arizona State University, and lives with her husband and fur babies in Arizona.

THIS IS HOW WE END THINGS de R.J. Jacobs

Six students. One professor. All trained in the art of deception. All with a reason to kill…

THIS IS HOW WE END THINGS
by R.J. Jacobs
Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2023

It’s almost spring break in the university town of Forest, North Carolina. Campus is deserted and the temperature is dropping. Someone is watching and waiting. Someone who has killed before plans to kill again.

Under the direction of Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students remain on campus. They have been conducting an experiment on the psychology of deception to uncover the science behind lies. But they each have something to hide themselves.

Then, a test goes awry, and an angry subject ends up in handcuffs. The group believes it to be a fluke incident. But when one of them is discovered murdered in Lyon’s office less than twenty-four hours later, they find that their studies may have deadly consequences–and that each of them had a reason to kill. With a local detective on the case and a major snowstorm moving in, the students soon realize that lies can be more dangerous than they ever believed. How do you spot a liar who may be an expert on the psychology of deception?

R.J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. He maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide variety of clinical concerns. After completing a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans. He is the author of Always the First to Die.

THE WOMAN AT THE WHEEL de Penny Haw

Carl Benz may be known as the “Father of the Automobile,” but Bertha Benz was the woman behind the wheel driving the world into a new era. THE WOMAN AT THE WHEEL is a gorgeous historical fiction novel that takes a peek under the hood, examining the life of a fascinating woman who refused to let men hit the brakes on her revolutionary machine.

THE WOMAN AT THE WHEEL
by Penny Haw
Sourcebooks Landmark, November 2023

He is known as The Father of the Automobile, but she drove their success.

Bertha Benz not only invested her dowry in the invention of the world’s first motorized carriage, which she and her husband, Carl labored over for years; she’s also the chief designer, mechanic, and tester of the machine.

Now, however, with the moguls who promised to back the machine withdrawing their support, Carl is ready to throw in the towel. Bertha knows that to give up would not only bankrupt the Benz family, but that it would also ruin everything they’ve worked for and their marriage. Besides, Bertha believes in the machine.

Ignoring the cynics and the men who ridicule her, Bertha takes matters into her own hands, secretly planning a trip that will either hasten the couple’s passage to absolute derision and impoverishment or prove to the world their genius. What Bertha doesn’t know is that Carl is on the cusp of making a deal with their nemesis. She is not only risking her marriage and life’s work, but is also up against her husband’s doubt and duplicity, the bias of every man she knows— and the clock.

Penny Haw is a long-time journalist and columnist and latter-day author. She has written for many leading South African newspapers and magazines for more than three decades. The Wilderness Between Us was her debut contemporary novel for adults and The Invincible Miss Cust was her debut historical fiction novel. Haw lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

42 REASONS TO HATE THE UNIVERSE de Chris Ferrie

From bestselling author Chris Ferrie comes an out of this world pop science space book on how the universe is, indeed, trying to kill us all.

42 REASONS TO HATE THE UNIVERSE
(And One Reason Not To)
by Chris Ferrie
Sourcebooks, February 2024

Yes, the Universe is beautiful. And, despite all our scientific progress, it’s still pretty mysterious. But you know what? The Universe is also kind of an asshole.

Consider that you are just a group of atoms structured in a specific way that you can try to understand this thing we call existence. Those same atoms could have just as easily been used to make the dog shit you are cleaning off your shoes. The fact is, when you zoom out and look at the Universe and how it functions, you’ll see that it’s usually not in our favor. Many of the laws of physics are just kind of… dick-ish.

Chris Ferrie is an award-winning physicist and Senior Lecturer for Quantum Software and Information at the University of Technology Sydney. He has a Masters in applied mathematics, BMath in mathematical physics and a PhD in applied mathematics. He lives in Australia with his wife and children.